Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Wizards avoid embarrassment; Arenas done blogging

The Wizards, still missing Gilbert Arenas and Brendan Haywood and playing without Caron Butler, Juan Dixon, and Darius Songaila, managed to beat the Charlotte Bobcats tonight 95-93. Antawn Jamison scored 27 points and grabbed eight rebounds, Nick Young scored 23 points, and Mike James and Andray Blatche each chipped in with 15 points. Dominic McGuire also contributed four points, six rebounds, three assists, one block, and one steal while playing a team-high 44 minutes.

Though the Wizards (17-56) and Bobcats (31-40) are both below .500, each team had something to play for tonight. The Bobcats were (and still are) trying to sneak into the Eastern Conference's eighth and final playoff spot (they're now 2.5 games back), and the Wizards were trying to defeat a Southeast Division rival for the first time this season. As mentioned before, no team in NBA history has ever gone an entire season without winning a game in its own division. And with tonight's win, the Wizards will not be that team -- hooray!

To shift gears, Arenas, who is apparently planning to make his return to the court on Saturday against the Detroit Pistons, has "retired" from blogging:

"I started looking at it as, before, it was fun, and everybody has fun reading it. And then it's like everything I said, everybody started using it as firepower, instead of saying it's just entertainment. You know, people started using it, trying to take bits and pieces instead of enjoying the blog," the three-time All-Star said. "So once I started seeing that, I just started visualizing, eventually, this is going to be the double-[edged] sword thing. It made me and it's going to kill me, so I might as well stop."

That's too bad; Arenas's blog entires were hilarious, interesting, and a great insight to his truly quirky self. But if he returns to the court and becomes the old Arenas again, no one will care if he's typing away on his computer.

I guess it might be time to get serious and make up for lost time. And hopefully no more seasons like this one happen again anytime soon. Wizards fans hope so.